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Kresge Art Museum summer exhibitions showcase historic, contemporary Asian art

By Maria Cherem
Kresge Art Museum

From May 3 through August 1, the Kresge Art Museum will display “Silk Road to Clipper Ship: Trade, Changing Markets, and East Asian Ceramics,” a collection of Chinese porcelains illustrating the influence that foreign trade and changing

domestic markets had on stimulating Chinese, Japanese and Korean potters. These various influences led to continual reinvention of their repertoire of shapes and decorative techniques.

The exhibition, drawn from the renowned collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Art, is divided into three major sections.

The first portion follows the exchange along the Silk Road between the Chinese Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) and ancient Persia and the Mediterranean world between the second and tenth centuries.

Imari fish plate with phoenix and hollyhock designs, Japan, mid-19th century. Porcelain with underglaze blue and overglaze enamel designs. On loan from UMMA, Gift of the William T. and Dora G. Hunter Collection.

The second part features colored porcelains made for domestic use and foreign exchange during the Qing Dynasty

(1644–1911).

The final section focuses on the competition between kilns for imperial patronage and the Chinese influence on later Japanese and Korean ceramic traditions.

The opening reception for “Silk Road” will be held Thursday, May 8, from 6 to 8 p.m., with a 6:30 p.m. gallery walk led by Natsu Oyobe. Oyobe is curatorial research specialist of Asian Art at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, where she is working on the reinstallation of the Asian galleries in the renovated and expanded building to reopen in 2009.

This exhibition is a signature event of MSU’s Year of Arts and Culture, and is supported by a grant from the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and the MSU Asian Studies Center.

Many events and programs are planned in conjunction with this exhibition, including lectures, gallery walks, a film and a children’s activity featuring Japanese calligraphy. For dates and details, visit artmuseum.msu.edu.

Chinese, late 19th century, Portrait of a Scholar in a Landscape, hanging scroll; ink and color on paper, 52 x 26 inches. Gift of Anthony Ying Chang Koo and Benjamin Hai Chang Koo in memory of their parents VeeSing and Tseng Soo Koo.

Koo scroll donation

In keeping with the celebration of Asian art this summer, Kresge Art Museum will unveil several new acquisitions of Asian art.
“Portrait of a Scholar in a Landscape,” a mid-19th century scroll, was painted on the occasion of the scholar’s 60th birthday and donated by the scholar’s grandsons, MSU professor emeritus Anthony Koo and Benjamin Koo.

“This is a fine example of a long tradition of representing scholars in nature,” said Susan Bandes, Kresge Art Museum director. “Although the face is detailed and recognizable, the rest of the landscape is sketchy, providing a contemplative refuge, a place of isolated beauty in which one can escape from everyday life and commune with nature.”

	Zhu Ming (Chinese, born 1972), Thousand Hands (Neon Man), 2004, color photograph, 24 x 20 inches. MSU purchase, funded by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and the Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies.

Benjamin Koo funded the conservation of the scroll, which will be on view for the first time beginning in May.

New Chinese photography acquisitions

In 2007, Kresge Art Museum received a grant from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation to acquire contemporary Chinese photography. “Contemporary Chinese photography is now an area of enormous international interest,” said April Kingsley, KAM curator. “Documentary photography provided a way to rediscover China’s identity after the Cultural Revolution. In the 1980s, a new wave of photography arose, focused on life in China. The wave crested in the East Village on Beijing’s fringe with performance artists such as Zhu Ming and Xiao Lu and the photographers who documented their actions. It then crashed with the crackdown on artists after the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square. The artists went ‘unofficial’ after that, showing privately, under the governmental radar, and internationally, where they have become famous.”

The image below documents one of Zhu Ming’s performance pieces. in which he covered himself in green neon paint and then entered a large plastic bubble in a darkened room. Capturing his movement, the camera transforms him into a multiarmed, iridescent otherworldly deity.

Accompanying photos courtesy of Kresge Art Museum